Jesu Dulcis Memoria

A poem ranging from forty two to fifty three stanzas (in various manuscripts ), to form the three hymns of the Office of the Holy Name : "Jesu dulcis memoria" ( Vespers ), "Jesu rex admirabilis" ( Matins ), "Jesu decus angelicum" ( Lauds ). A feature of the long poem is the single rhymic scheme for a stanza, e.g.:

The ascription of authorship to St. Bernard is general and, thinks Mearns, (Dict. of Hymnology, 1892), probable -- a view which he is still inclined to in the second edition of the "Dictionary" (1907). Guéranger thought that certain manuscripts "prove beyond a doubt " that it was composed in the fourteenth century by a Benedictine abbess -- a view contradicted by the manuscript cited by Mearns, of about 1200. Blume (see Hymnody and Hymnology ) denies its authorship by St. Bernard, and Dom Pothier (Revue bénédictine, X, 147) found it in a manuscript of the eleventh century ascribed to a Benedictine abbess (St. Bernard was born in 1090).